More Explanation
To reiterate, the lorax fandom sprang up after the release of the 2012 lorax movie, which is based off of the 1972 book and cartoon. The 2012 movie gave the character the Once-ler a face; naturally, a good portion of the fandom came to enjoy this new interpretation of the character for varying reasons. You then have the ask blog offshoots of the fandom, and the fandom has many of them, along with countless AUs. All throughout this, you have the strong presence of the seussdom. Otherwise known as the Dr Seuss fandom they are mainly individuals who share a general love for classic seuss in its entirety. To get a basic idea of how everything is connected, please take a look at the chart to the right. History of the Lorax In August of 1971, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax was published as a children’s book. The story itself followed a young unnamed boy, as he visited the Onceler to ask what had happened to the trees. The Onceler, who in this book is seen only through the slatted window as a pair of green gloves, tells the boy his past for him. He tells the boy of how he came upon the forest of truffula trees, and used them to create his invention, the Thneed. He tells him of how the Lorax then came to him, to tell him to stop, and of how he did not listen...until of course, it was too late. After he had finally chopped down that very last tree, he could no longer produce his thneeds, destroying not only the industry he had built up, but the entire ecosystem he had been surviving off of as well. In February of 1972, CBS released Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax as an animated television film. The story stayed much the same, and is true to the book. Dr Seuss himself was greatly present in the process. In March of 2012, Illumination Entertainment released Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax as an animated feature film globally. The story was now changed substantially; the boy from before was now given the name Ted, and he goes to the Onceler because a girl he likes wants to know what happened to the trees. The Onceler doesn’t just tell Ted his story; the backstory is shown on screen, giving the young man a face, for the very first time. The big changes in the storyline come with the way the movie switches between the Onceler's tale and Ted's own in the city of Thneedville. Thneedville is a futuristic society where everyone has to pay for clean air, making the man in charge of producing it extremely wealthy. The Breakdown The Lorax fandom began small, right after the release of the 2012 film. The nucleus was hosted on tumblr, as several fans gathered who had enjoyed it. The one thing everyone had in common of course, was that everyone liked the Onceler. It got to the point where enough of them were there that they were referred to as the "onceler fandom." Together, the "Oncelings" did what every fandom is good at doing; they created GIFs, and fanart, fanfiction and analysis, and with that of course, came the shipping. The ships can be broken down into two broad categories: #The infamous Oncest :: This selfcest ship involves two versions of the Onceler on his own timeline; the version of himself before he had reached his success, and the one after. The ship can be both sexual, and platonic in nature. There are depictions of forms of abuse, rape and/or other kinds of violence in the fanart and fanfiction. However in other cases the pairing is portrayed in a lighter and sweeter tone. It really depends on who the fan work is coming from, so be aware of that. Another flavor of this ship involved the 1972 version of the Onceler paired up with his 2012 self; with the advent of the askblogs, there came to be so many versions of Oncest that the one that started it all came to be known as "Classic Oncest." This name was coined so that people would be able to search the version of the ship that they wanted without other kinds clogging their tags. : 2. Normaler :: Normaler is the ship that pairs the Onceler up with Ted's Grandma Norma, from the 2012 movie. This ship has many interpretations. For some, the two are depicted as younger versions of themselves meeting in the past and falling in love. Some fans have theorized that the Once-ler is Ted's grandfather for this reason. Norma seems to know quite a lot about the Once-ler in the movie, thus triggering the idea that connections between the two leads to a past love life. The Once-ler also mentions that he "knows a thing or two" about girls, which many fans had found interesting, considering that in most of the movie he is alone. For others, while they could have had a relationship previously in the past and later reunited, they may have also met for the first time when they were indeed older. Either way, when you include the many askblog aus that came later, there's a lot too go by. No "Classic Normaler" tag had to be created for practical browsing practices though, unlike with Oncest. While these are the two most worthy of note, there are others of course. Please check the page on fandom ships for more of a breakdown. With the advent of askblogs themselves, many things changed. While not all fans of the lorax movie or onceler are fandom fans of the ask blogs as well, basically all ask blog fans in one way or another are fans of the movie themselves. While ask blogs are definitely a large part of the fandom, they are not by all means the only part. To explain them though, a good chunk of them are focused on the canon version(s) of the Once-ler, or reinterpretations of him. People create these ask blogs to have fun, be creative, or just to contribute something that they enjoy in general. Some ask blogs are start out as jokes, but the creators decide to keep them going beyond the period of time originally intended. This can be confusing for outsiders, who assume that all ask blogs were created in sincerity, and are not "in" on the inside jokes. These ask blogs came to be known as "mainverse" ask blogs, with the invention of the fandom AU, the first of these was Camp Weehawken, during the summer of 2012. Here, everyone involved went to summer camp. The girls (Fem!Oncelers and Normas) were at Camp North Nitch, which is across the lake. Once-lings and Once-sirs were at Camp South Stitch. Started by Pinkcakes-blackcoffee ’s interpretation of a few of Swag Onceler’s posts, it exploded into a fandom-wide event, with most askblogs participating via “Weehawken Weekend,” blogging as their younger camp selves. This was before seperate blogs were used for AU events. Most askblogs have by now reverted back to normal. However, Weehawken continued to exist as an AU, starting up again once every summer. The first fandom AU to be based solely around story telling would be Truffula Flu, which is explained more in depth on its own page. Others of course, came after. Where things get interesting though is the ofshoot ask blog communities; these would be the Deoncelerized ask blogs and their aus, as well as seperate fandoms altogether, such as the Personifications. Deoncelerization is when an ask blog becomes so much its own character, as opposed to one in the seuss/lorax canon, that the ask blog mod decides to make them their own character, and completely makes the character their own OC. A lot of people sometimes share headcanons over what ask blogs would look like if they deoncelerized, but that doesn’t mean they will, as it’s just for fun. Entire AUs can become deoncelerized though; for example, the Deoncelerized version of Camp Weehawken is known as "Camp Deehawken." The only seperate fandom ofshoot to come from the ask blogs that is not "deoncelerized" in the true sense of the term is the Personification Fandom. What had occured was an ask blog went up known only as apersonificationofgreed. Basically the idea was that someone wondered what it would look like when you took the greed out of the onceler and personified him, and it all spiraled from there. Other personification ask blogs went up, to the point where many of them were started by people who were never a part of the lorax fandom at all. This little subfandom outgrew its roots and is now is its own small universe, filled with angels, demons, and even the Devil himself. The main players are the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues, though there are many, many other personifications. It is by now its own standalone fandom, and even has a page on TV Tropes and Idioms.